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Part Two: Secondary School Ideas That Work Well

In the last article, we shared with you about using the "Christian Homeschool Daily Planner" and the built-in Grand Plan to help your "pre-adult" take more initiative and responsibility in owning his high school education.

Why should it all be on you, the parent? Answer. It shouldn't. Transfer ownership to the child in secondary school. Transfer it more and more, the older they get. Use this concept to train your child to take responsibility, be accountable, and become a pre-adult.

In the next few articles, we will share some ideas to help you work with your child to forge ahead in some remarkable ways. Some of these concepts we learned later in our children's home-school years, so we weren’t even able to take full advantage of them, like you can.

That's the great thing about this home-schooling thing -- what one generation of home-schoolers learn, the next can exploit. Hopefully you who come after us will have that much more of an opportunity because of our experience. And our children will have even more than we all did. It's a beautiful thing.

If you haven't yet learned about our "Christian Homeschool Daily Planner," you might want to go review our recent articles where we describe its components (or go to our Web site). We aren't suggesting that you have to acquire one in order to use most these ideas, but we think it will help to have some kind of a planner or organizer for your student. It is a great tool to make your home-schooling job easier. We designed ours with many valuable tools included specifically for Christian home-schooling students.

So once you have some kind of a planner and some way to map out a high school plan (it doesn’t have to be our Grand Plan - just some kind of plan), how do you proceed?

Well, here's what we recommend. Take advantage of the "system." Learn from home schoolers who have blazed the trail before you. Use the tools that the colleges and universities and advanced high school students are using. (We will share a few.) Research ways to help your student(s) get ahead of the pack.

Experienced Home Schoolers

Probably in your community there are some home-schooling "veterans" who have forged the trail and successfully gotten their children through high school. Do you know any of these families? Why not pick their brains? Why rebuild the wheel? Frankly, we didn't have very many to learn from as we were raising our kids. But there were a precious few. And most home schoolers today do.

In fact, the reason we wrote our book "The Guidance Manual" for the Christian Home School was to provide a resource for home schoolers who were coming behind us, so that you wouldn't have to rebuild that wheel yourselves. You can make great strides just from one or two simple ideas. Here's a link that might give you a couple: www.davidandlaurie.com/shareexperience.chtml.

As you see in this link, there were a few simple ideas we were able to share quickly, that may really help a home-schooling family to make efficient use of their time, money, and resources. Why should we all have to struggle through this thing? Why not take advantage of other's ideas?

As home-schooling families, we have the opportunity to network with one another. Take advantage of each others' talents and gifts. Look around for ideas that work for your family. Share the ones you have that helped make your life easier. By doing this, we are helping one another to excel, moving things to the next level.

Those who have successfully home schooled through high school know that what we are doing for our children is the right thing to do. We have given our children an advantage. That advantage is multiplied with every succeeding year as we gain more wisdom in how to do things well. It's by interacting with one another that we improve. So find those in your area who are like-minded and bless one another.

Take advantage of those who are outside your local community as well. By attending home-school events, and using the Internet, you have access to so much. Obviously, that's what makes www.crosswalk.com (and even our Web site, www.davidandlaurie.com) and other home-schooling Web sites, e-groups, and Web rings so valuable.

You can gain insight without even leaving your home. So use all of these tools to your children's advantage. The results will go way beyond what you may even imagine. Other ideas to follow . . .

David and Laurie Callihan are authors of "The Guidance Manual for the Christian Home School: A Parent’s Guide for Preparing Home School Students for College or Career," and the brand new "Christian Homeschool Daily Planner" (with their Grand Plan built right into it). Learn more at www.davidandlaurie.com.